Poconos' Colonial past hidden in Del. Water Gap park

The year is 1756 and farmers working their fields in the Minisink frontier of Middle Smithfield Township are ambushed and killed by a raiding party of Delaware Indians.

DAVID PIERCE

The year is 1756 and farmers working their fields in the Minisink frontier of Middle Smithfield Township are ambushed and killed by a raiding party of Delaware Indians.

The raiders move on to kill dozens of women and children.

Did a massacre of local white settlers really take place during the French and Indian War?

Or was it a relatively minor skirmish with fewer casualties, under normal conventions of war, as most historical accounts say?

"I'm putting forth a hypothesis that we had a massacre there," said Middle Smithfield resident Danny Younger, who has done considerable research on local forts of the era.

Younger, who belongs to the newly formed Middle Smithfield Historical Commission, has been sifting through maps, letters and documents to gain a better understanding of what went on around here during the war.

The French and Indian War was actually the North American theater of a worldwide war pitting the French and British, and their European allies, against each other on at least three continents.

"The Seven Years War was considered the first World War," said Brinnen Carter, cultural resource manager at the Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area, where the battle took place.

The fighting at Fort Hyndshaw, near Bushkill, happened about one year after a protective garrison was removed from the fort.

Strategic forts with food and weapons and a small fighting force — including Hyndshaw — had been established along the northeastern Pennsylvania frontier early in the war, at the direction of Benjamin Franklin.

Fort Hamilton was built near Stroudsburg's Main and Ninth streets, where the Monroe County Historical Society Museum is today.

The forts were intended not only for mutual protection of settlers who would gather there when an attack was imminent, but were staging areas for British militias to take the fight to the Delawares.

The white forces might raid a northern Indian village in the Wyoming Valley and return to the fort.

Indian tribes allied with the French would send raiding parties to the Smithfields.

"It was mostly raiding and burning," Carter said. "They would burn a homestead."

The forts would have a residual force of 15 to 20 men at all times.

Militias abandoned some of the forts, like Hyndshaw, after the Delawares shifted strategy to fielding larger combined forces, rather than smaller isolated units, Younger said.

Several forts also were built along the New Jersey side of the Delaware River.

The Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area encompasses eight to 10 French and Indian War forts — perhaps most of any federally-owned site.

But none of the locations have been publicly identified or promoted, though a national historical marker at Route 209 and Community Drive provides a thumbnail history of Hyndshaw.

Exact location of some forts has been lost to time.

Top priority for National Park Service officials is ensuring the long buried locations remain intact for present and future historians to study.

It is illegal for any visitor to a National Park Service property to possess, let alone use, a metal detector.

"The main objective at this point is to preserve the sites," Carter said. "It is the core of our understanding of the forts themselves and how they related to each other."

Modern ground-penetrating radar and other sensing equipment make it easier to find and interpret historical sites without disturbing them through intrusive archeological digs.

Fort Johns, south of Montague, N.J., was located on a high ridge where trees were cleared for an unobstructed view of the river, from where Indians raiders were likely to cross from Pennsylvania.

A 6-foot-high log and earthwork berm surrounded the fort, probably with a 50-foot-square log house in the center, Carter said while leading a tour.

A 120-foot-square stockade enclosed the fort.

The likely Fort Hyndshaw site is contained inside a semi-circular bluff at the edge of a ravine. This fort was smaller than Fort Johns, and contained 70-foot-wide earthwork berms on each side.

The fort, named after militia Col. George Hyndshaw, was likely surrounded by a 300-yard clearing where trees had been removed.

"You could see hundreds of yards, but it would be relatively dark," Carter said.

Hyndshaw would have permanent stores of food and ammunition for 100-to-200 settlers who might go there during an attack, in addition to what the settlers brought with them.

Younger became interested in the Fort Hyndshaw story while taking his son on a driving lesson.

Younger, in the passenger seat, noticed the historical marker for the first time.

An Internet search produced a newspaper article and the results of an 1896 study aimed at locating area forts.

That group came up with a Fort Hyndshaw location that didn't appear to match the spot identified by the fort's French and Indian War "commissary of the Muster" James Young, Younger said.

Young's job was to oversee provisions, including blankets, lead, gunpowder and cross-cut saws.

"You could say he was a cross between a military general and an IRS auditor," Younger said.

Younger bases his belief a massacre may have taken place at Hyndshaw on the absence of a written account of prisoners.

Settlers and colonial officials were usually meticulous about recording names of those captured, for repatriation after the war.

A nearby cemetery of possible dead from the battle has 59 plots, only 13 of which are identified with names and dates, Younger said.

Younger speculates Moravian missionaries, who generally had excellent relations with Indian nations, may have been among the victims. They likely inhabited the fort after the militia withdrew, he said.

Younger's quest to discover the true story of what happened at Hyndshaw continues.